Sublime

The Mongol Empire was not, in fact, the last attempt to create an all-encompassing Muslim land empire across Eurasia. The final remarkable attempt was due to an ethnic Turk, born near Samarkand (modern-day Uzbekistan), who took his inspiration from Genghis Khan. Timur, known to the West as Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) because of injuries he had incur

Before 1400, an observer who was able to survey the world would have had few accurate clues as to which of the main civilizations in Eurasia would eventually assert a worldwide pre-eminence. China, the Islamic realm in Middle Eurasia, and Europe had each attained a high degree of socio-political organization and material culture.

In the two centuries that followed the death of Tamerlane, Eurasia remained divided between the three civilized worlds we have explored so far, and a number of others, Buddhist and Hindu, that we have passed over in silence. There was little to show that their cultural differences were narrowing. If anything, the energetic state-building that was t

On the eve of the close encounter with the West, China’s distinctive political trajectory (still dominated by its symbiotic relationship with Inner Asia) propelled it not towards an all-powerful oriental despotism (imagined by Europeans) – which might have permitted drastic change in the face of external challenge – but instead still further toward